


Safe Inside

by geekprincess26



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Arranged Marriage, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Slight Mention of Past Rape/Non-Con, Wedding Night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-05-03 09:33:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14566149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geekprincess26/pseuds/geekprincess26
Summary: Jon and Sansa must marry for political reasons.  Sansa’s last wedding night leaves her paralyzed with fear.  Jon discovers that he might, in fact, know more than nothing about what his wife needs.





	Safe Inside

**Author's Note:**

> I was thinking about how Sansa might act on her wedding night if she had to marry Jon for political reasons, and this headcanon popped out and screamed, "Write me!" This is not a sexy wedding-night fic, just my imagining of how Sansa might approach Jon given her past history and what might play out in the ensuing awkwardness between them.

The servants had done a fine job of setting the fire in the lord’s chambers.  The flames danced merrily atop the logs, shooting out sparks that sang against the hearth in tune with the musicians playing at the feast in the Great Hall far below.  Brienne and Podrick, who had been warned to keep away any of its revelers, shuffled to either side of the door in a cadence matching the snap of the flames against their fuel.

 

Inside the bedchamber, Jon Snow frowned.  He could not see his new wife’s face, for she had turned it toward the hearth, but he could see her hands.  They trembled in time with the quiver of the flames, and almost as violently.  He had first felt her hands shaking that day as he had grasped them under the heart tree, and they had not stopped even though he had brushed his thumbs soothingly across their backs as he and Sansa had spoken the words that bound them as husband and wife in front of the Old Gods.  She had stilled them somewhat at the feast, but he had seen the tension in the tilt of her neck as she took her place at the table, had noticed her knuckles whitening as she grasped her silverware.  Even during the dancing she had held her body rigid, as though she wore Jon’s armor.  When Jon had leaned over to ask her if she would like to depart, she had jumped in her chair, and her hands had begun trembling again.  Now he could clearly see without any help from the candles lit about the room that she was shaking harder than she had been all day.

 

Jon’s frown deepened.  When they had first agreed to marry, partly to placate the insufferable Northern lords and partly to appease Jon’s even more insufferable aunt, he had assured Sansa she need never fear him as she had Tyrion Lannister, and certainly not as she had Ramsay Bolton.  She would keep her own chambers, and he would keep his, and there would be no bedding, no matter what his aunt or the lords had to say.  She had nodded at every word, but her jaw had set and her eyes had taken on a haunted look, and he had known she must be thinking of Ramsay Bolton and the terrors he had inflicted on her in the chambers just below these, and he had cursed himself for his failure to come up with any words to allay her fears.

 

He would not make the same mistake now if he could help it, he decided, and he took a deep breath.

 

“Sansa,” he said, his murmur barely louder than the crackling flames.  At the same moment, Sansa turned to face him, and the haunted look in her blue eyes had taken on a flicker of terror, and her voice trembled with her hands when she said, “Jon – ”

 

Each gestured for the other to continue.  Sansa’s jaw set in the way it had at Castle Black, when she’d told him she would take back Winterfell with or without his help, and Jon knew he would have to speak first.  He swallowed.  He forgot the words he had been about to say, but he was sure they must have been woefully inadequate.  What could he say? She had left home to find songs and princes, only to find monsters everywhere she turned, and the only marriage bed she had known was that of a demon from the deepest of the seven hells.  Instead of kindness and protection and soft gowns and lemon cakes and all she had wanted as a girl, she had gotten rape and torture, and, unworthy as he was and as often as he had failed her, Jon would gladly spend the rest of his days making amends for it.  But he did not know how to explain it entirely.

 

“Sansa,” he said at last.  She blinked, and the flames’ reflection danced across the tears quivering in her eyes.  Jon’s breath caught, and he remembered catching her in his arms in the courtyard of Castle Black and feeling her sob against his body.

 

“Sansa,” he repeated, whispering now.  “Don’t worry, Sansa, I’ll not touch you.”

 

She bit her lip.  Her chin was quivering too.  “Your aunt expects heirs – ” she began.  Jon shook his head.

 

“She can expect whatever she likes,” he replied, and refrained from growling about where exactly Daenerys Targaryen could put her expectations.  “We can have heirs when you – if you want them.  Not till then.”

 

She opened her mouth, and Jon shifted his feet and caught the crack between two stones.  He stumbled forward, and Sansa reached out to steady him.  He regained his footing to find her palm pressed against his chest.  His nightshirt had slid down to reveal the tip of one of the scars his brothers had given him at the Wall.  Sansa regarded it for a moment before raising her gaze to his.  For several moments his trembling heart beat against her trembling hand.  Then her fingers relaxed, and Jon slid one hand forward to rest lightly against them while his other reached out to tuck back a tendril of her hair that had fallen nearly in front of her eye.

 

“I’ll not touch you,” Jon repeated, still whispering.  He gently rubbed her temple, where he had tucked the strand of hair, and felt her trembling slow.  “Not unless you want it, and I’ll – I’ll make sure it doesn’t hurt.  I’ll never make it hurt.”

 

The tears retreated from Sansa’s gaze, but the wariness remained, the same wariness she’d had when Jon had approached her on the battlements after they’d taken back Winterfell and he’d told her they needed to trust each other.  Jon fell silent and rubbed his thumb in soothing circles over the back of Sansa’s hand.  She did not withdraw her gaze, but slowly her hand went still, and her fingers softened over his heart.  Jon lowered his other hand to cup her face, and her gaze softened, and she nodded.  Jon leaned forward carefully, giving her time to withdraw, but she stayed still as he pressed his lips to her forehead.  It did not tremble, nor did her left hand when she reached out to steady herself on Jon’s arm.

 

They stayed in their odd embrace for several moments, Jon caressing Sansa’s hand against his heart and his lips repeating their imprint on Sansa’s forehead.  Gradually the pulse in her jaw lessened to match his heartbeat, and her body relaxed into his touch, and a slow sigh left her as she nestled her head onto Jon’s shoulder.  Jon kissed her hair and cradled the back of her head against him and smiled faintly into the light of the sinking flames.

 

Let his aunt take her expectations and drop off the cliffs of Dragonstone, for all he cared.  He held Sansa, and she trembled no more, and nothing else could matter after that.


End file.
